TIL about "Shell Worksheets": a feature of the BBEdit software that has some things in common with my Text Interface ramblings and Swyft environments.
Superficially it's simple: Imagine a typical text editor where you can execute arbitrary shell commands by selecting them in the text, and have their output flow back into the text as well. It's more nuanced than this, but that is the gist (you can learn more in the User's Manual).
The manual section on Shell Worksheets makes a reference to MPW, which was a new acronym to me that I had to do a little searching to derefernce but eventually I figured out it was Macintosh Programmer's Workshop, which is built around a similar concept.
This might sound like a pretty obvious or simple idea, but it's incredibly powerful and the first I'd heard of something like this in a contemporary piece of software. It's so much like the SwyftCard's "SEND" command (or how "CALC" actually works under the hood by invoking the Apple II's underlying BASIC) that I have to wonder if it's roots can be traced back to Raskin?
I was reading about BBEdit for a number of reasons. It is a Quality piece of software that has somehow managed to exist since the 90's without being bought or absorbed and turned into garbage and the people behind it seem to genuinely care about producing good software. I'm also considering switching to Apple's cheapest laptop for a number of reasons (if I do I'll write a post explaining why) so I'm surveying what software is available for me to use if I make the switch.
I used BBEdit some but more so it's sibling TextWrangler back in the System 7 days (the last time I genuinely enjoyed using a Mac). While it wasn't my favorite editor at the time (that honor went to SaintEdit), my needs from an editor have grown a bit since then and I'm excited to have a chance to explore BBEdit again for the first time this millennium. The existence of features like Shell Worksheets makes me think there may be some philosophical overlap between what BBEdit does and where I want computers to go in the future.
Jason J. Gullickson, 2026